During this visit, you should work with one or more groups of students if you haven't already, and observe your teacher doing the same. For this journal entry, describe your teacher's teaching style. What type of relationships with students does he or she nurture in his or her classes? How do students perceive that power is distributed in the classes? Does this vary within or across the different classes the teacher has? Cite examples from your observations to support your inferences. Remember to reflect on what style of teaching you will gravitate toward and the how you want to be perceived by your students.
So for this reflection I will be writing about my high school classroom - Dr. Upegui has a very unique classroom style, where he connects with the students on a cultural, realistic level being himself from Columbia and able to speak Spanish fluently. He has a very realistic down to earth connection with his students that conveys mutual respect while still maintaining authority and relativity for the content he teaches. Some may find some of his techniques with students inappropriate/unconventional however I find them extremely culturally appropriate and realistic. Upegui addresses his students primarily by their last name "miss so and so and mr. so and so. In addition to that level of mutual respect he establishes he also doesn't shy from the casual swear word for emphasis or shy away from talking about subjects that the students ask about or truly care about. He will readjust his entire schedule to elaborate on topics or broaden his spectrum of topic coverage based on student interest.
The students, being your stereotypical high school Juniors and Seniors at times could care less about the material presented to them by the teacher and more about the extracurricular after-school activities. Mr. Upegui spends special time and provides special attention to give these students attention to keep them on task and focused, while he pays less attention to his more diligent students. The last day I observed we worked with the students using an entire class period to allow the students class time to work on their projects which as Upegui informed them was the last grade the students would receive and their chance to raise or lower their grades. During these classes after taking attendance, he walked around to each group and showed them their current grade on their Skyward grading and attendance system which they have been using at CFHS and mastered the use of in the past few years. This practice allowed him to push students to pass in assignments, no matter how much of the assignment they had done, Upegui encouraged them and even demonstrated how simply passing in an attempted assignment could improve their grade and make a difference on whether or not they could pass 11th grade biology. In addition to this, Upegui explained to me that students who had above an A average were allowed to work in pairs on the presentation while those below had to work alone. The presentation was a unit summary since it was covering biochemistry which isn't a required curriculum topic but he teaches briefly to help support the material in units to come, so instead of an em to test the students knowledge he has them present on the topics and provided interpretive examples to the class to help reinforce their understanding.
PS. sorry this was late, I didnt have the chance to go to my practicums last week so I waited until this week to make my observations and reflections.
So for this reflection I will be writing about my high school classroom - Dr. Upegui has a very unique classroom style, where he connects with the students on a cultural, realistic level being himself from Columbia and able to speak Spanish fluently. He has a very realistic down to earth connection with his students that conveys mutual respect while still maintaining authority and relativity for the content he teaches. Some may find some of his techniques with students inappropriate/unconventional however I find them extremely culturally appropriate and realistic. Upegui addresses his students primarily by their last name "miss so and so and mr. so and so. In addition to that level of mutual respect he establishes he also doesn't shy from the casual swear word for emphasis or shy away from talking about subjects that the students ask about or truly care about. He will readjust his entire schedule to elaborate on topics or broaden his spectrum of topic coverage based on student interest.
The students, being your stereotypical high school Juniors and Seniors at times could care less about the material presented to them by the teacher and more about the extracurricular after-school activities. Mr. Upegui spends special time and provides special attention to give these students attention to keep them on task and focused, while he pays less attention to his more diligent students. The last day I observed we worked with the students using an entire class period to allow the students class time to work on their projects which as Upegui informed them was the last grade the students would receive and their chance to raise or lower their grades. During these classes after taking attendance, he walked around to each group and showed them their current grade on their Skyward grading and attendance system which they have been using at CFHS and mastered the use of in the past few years. This practice allowed him to push students to pass in assignments, no matter how much of the assignment they had done, Upegui encouraged them and even demonstrated how simply passing in an attempted assignment could improve their grade and make a difference on whether or not they could pass 11th grade biology. In addition to this, Upegui explained to me that students who had above an A average were allowed to work in pairs on the presentation while those below had to work alone. The presentation was a unit summary since it was covering biochemistry which isn't a required curriculum topic but he teaches briefly to help support the material in units to come, so instead of an em to test the students knowledge he has them present on the topics and provided interpretive examples to the class to help reinforce their understanding.
PS. sorry this was late, I didnt have the chance to go to my practicums last week so I waited until this week to make my observations and reflections.